


One Foot In, and One Foot Back

by ElijahDarling



Series: words i have no translation for [3]
Category: For the People (TV 2018)
Genre: "When You're Allison Adams", "what do you do when love comes easy?", "what do you do with three soulmates?", "what do you do with unrequited pining?", Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Asexual Sandra Bell - implied, F/F, F/M, I gave Toby his actor's last name, Multi, Non-binary character, Original Character(s), Other, Pansexual Allison Adams, Pansexual Character, Polyamorous Character, Queer Allison Adams, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, [to the tune of drunken sailor], transgender character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 07:10:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15310134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElijahDarling/pseuds/ElijahDarling
Summary: "Allison doesn’t keep people that don’t want to be kept."Unrequited love is a foreign concept to Allison.





	One Foot In, and One Foot Back

**Author's Note:**

> I have lost control. I headcanoned Allison as very Straight right up until I started writing this ficlet. What the fuck. Also this entry for On Duty is late by a day and I still haven't finished writing my last entry so you can tell this is going well.
> 
> Title taken from I and Love and You by The Avett Brothers.

Allison didn’t consider herself to be a possessive person. Or, maybe it was more that she wasn’t a jealous person. She didn’t care to have things in her life that she wasn’t confident wanted to be with her. It hadn’t been hard to split up with her high school girlfriend that had cheated on her when she seemed to realize a whole world of women opened up to her in a Californian college nowhere near a first romance and shy, wet kisses. 

 

They’d made all sorts of promises. Allison had kept hers, Beth hadn’t. 

 

Allison doesn’t keep people that don’t want to be kept. So she shut the door on Beth and her surfer jet black hair, her chipped nail polish, her grin that seemed to show every tooth and a fair amount of gum. Everything tidily packed and stamped and mailed off within two business days, and then she’d met Dominique - who loved ketchup on everything and could make a home anywhere given enough time. Dominique left for South America the same day Allison had her LSATs and she still gets postcards and letters from them - marked with a different color lip print instead of a signature at the end.  

 

“You are the love of my life,” Dominique tells her in a rare phone call, and Allison knows that on the inside of their lip sits her name, that each time they kiss their devotion into the postcards she receives that it is with the soft sigh of “Allison”. Dominique loves belonging to her in this way - with paper tethers and miles between. 

 

Two months before she meets Seth, Dominique sends her an invitation to their wedding. Allison happily checks her acceptance and adds a guest thinking of Sandra and how the night before they’d curled up in bed together and fallen asleep entangled. Sandra has no Name anywhere on her, doesn’t seem to mind that Allison has a Beth Dylan and a Dominique Thomas and a Toby Villanueva. Sandra doesn’t mind that Allison knows for sure that at least Beth and Dominique have an Allison Adams in requitement. But Sandra… well, Sandra isn’t in love with her. Sandra loves her in a way that is uncomfortable for them both - not enough intimacy for Allison and too much for Sandra.

 

It is with Sandra that Allison first encounters the concept of a person not just fitting perfectly in her life in what they end up meaning to her. It is with Sandra that she first experiences the struggle of an ill fitted love.

 

She takes Seth to Dominique’s wedding in Sandra’s place. Dominique holds her close, doesn’t let go even when Seth politely coughs. Dominique holds her close and says she smells different now and says “you were the love of who I used to be” and it is easy for Allison to let them go. It is as easy to let Dominique go as it was to let Beth go.

 

Seth is flabbergasted at her seeming flippancy toward her Soulmarks. He doesn’t understand never talking to Beth after breaking up in freshman year of college, but he also doesn’t understand keeping in touch with Dominique when they aren’t hers anymore. He doesn’t understand not waiting for Toby (whoever that may be). 

 

(Seth still feels vaguely guilty about not waiting for Sandra, even if he’s moved past the midwest fairytales of Soulmarks that were spoon fed to him from cradle and mother’s apron strings.)

 

“It meant something, it means something to you, right? That they have your Name and you have theirs?” He has his hand on her waist as they wait to meet her best friend, who has been avidly avoiding meeting him, and Allison is curiously quiet about. Seth constantly feels as though he is both at arm’s length and as close as a person can get. Allison’s smile is an invitation, though.

 

Allison looks up, pops her lips in contemplation, winks at him. “It did. It does.”

 

She spots Sandra over his shoulder; her never to be lover, her comrade in arms, and - unbeknownst to the man holding her close - Seth’s soulmate. 

 

Allison has had everything so easy when it comes to love, and her place in it.

 

( _ “He says that he has my Name, Al.” _

 

_ “Oh, yeah. That. I saw it when he got out of the shower last week. Your handwriting is atrocious, Ms. Bell.” _ )

 

She’s curious to see what she has when love isn’t a given.

**Author's Note:**

> I Tumblr @ https://elijahdarling.tumblr.com/ Come prompt me?


End file.
